Cinderbrine
by Drakaina's Flight
Summary: Collection of oneshots, primarily pairing drabbles; adventure, fluff, and overdue conversations.


**Characters: Link/Sheik [Pairing]**

**Verse: N/A**

* * *

The corridor was too dark and he was too tired to run anymore, but Link forced himself to keep up a steady pace as he moved forward. Torches leaned from the walls at odd intervals but revealed no branching passages, and he wondered how far they could have _gone._ It made no sense. He and Sheik had camped outside their den the previous night, and he'd woke in the morning to find his quiet Sheikah companion had disappeared... to somewhere. And not in the usual way.

Usually if Sheik wanted to be gone and not found, he wouldn't leave a trace.

The bloodied scraps of fabric left at their campsite had suggested to Link that Sheik hadn't really wanted to be gone, and there were a couple of dead things there which hadn't been around the night before.

So, yeah, apparently he was going to have to crawl into this goddess-forsaken crypt just a little bit earlier and lonelier than he'd planned. He didn't bother calling out; he figured it wasn't worth alerting the monsters to his presence, although if they'd gotten the jump on Sheik of all people, they could get it on him too if they wanted.

He blinked tired eyes and stared at the floor he passed over. Goddesses, this really _was_ a long corridor. He knew Sheik had said something the night before about needing him to enter the sepulcher proper, but Link didn't see why he needed the Sheikah just to get inside. The door had opened once he'd blown out the flames set around the room all at once. The grate beyond it squealed apart when he put out the eyes in the walls.

Why couldn't he find the next pathway in? But nothing was changing, the floor was still stone, and so were the walls and ceiling… Then abruptly his trail of bloodstains stopped, and he stared stupidly at the end of it.

How long had he been walking anyway? He looked back and saw the path behind him swallowed up in darkness, and there was darkness ahead of him too. He looked up, stood on the tips of his toes and reached for the ceiling – but his fingers brushed it and it didn't budge. No trap doors then. Speculatively he toed the floor, but the stone beyond the edge of his boot was solid too; then he took a closer look at the spattered floor and noticed that half of a dried droplet of blood was, well, missing.

He leaned closer to inspect it because he was sure he was just seeing things. He had to be. It had splashed on the floor and couldn't have landed on anything but the stone bricks, so why did it look like half of a circle?

He shifted his weight to stand on the other side of it, as though that would help, and his foot shot straight through the floor.

_What?_

He didn't have time to think before he flailed, panicked, lost his balance and came crashing down on… water? A thin inch-high layer that splashed a little and reeked something awful. A good thing his boots were waterproof.

"Great," he muttered exasperatedly. "Where am I _now?"_ But the question went unanswered of course, and he felt foolish for asking it.

"_Iden praga,"_ Sheik congratulated him tonelessly from somewhere. "You found the way in after all."

Link jumped at the sound of Sheik's voice and looked around, not seeing him. "How?" he asked, then decided that wasn't important. "Where are you?" He took a blind step forward and struggled to see anything in this pitch-black room.

"Not far. Don't cut the wire," Sheik warned him.

Link stopped and blinked. "What wire?"

Sheik sounded honestly puzzled. "The one two inches from your face, Hero."

He reached up a hand to feel for it and thought for an instant that the tip of his finger brushed a strand of spider silk. A click sounded in the ceiling and Link looked up toward where he thought it had come from.

Sheik's warning shout was unnecessary; the hairs on the back of his neck prickled and there was a small rush of air that informed him well enough he ought to duck if he wanted to keep his head, so he did. Something swung by and grazed the feathery tips of his hair as it passed, and embedded itself with a heavy, metal-sounding THUD into what he supposed was the wall.

"That was a bad idea," he summarized.

"Quite," said Sheik, his voice clipped. "You found that one. Don't find the others."

"How am I supposed to know what I am or aren't finding if I can't see anything?" Link asked, an uncharacteristic whine in his voice.

Pause. "You didn't honestly let it put a ceiling here, did you?"

Link frowned. "I what?" He put his hands up again and shuffled very slowly towards the wall. Surely if he hit the wall and followed it around, it wouldn't try to kill him.

Sheik sighed and sounded resigned. "You let it put a ceiling in here."

"I did not," Link protested. "I don't even know what you're talking about."

"Remind me again why I said _I_ was going to be handling most of this?" Sheik wondered. "The crypt. You expected there to be a floor when you entered that gate."

"Well, obviously," said Link.

"Well, you wanted one, so it gave you one," Sheik continued, unbothered. "But there's no floor up in that hall, Link, there never was."

He gave Sheik – well, the direction Sheik's voice was coming from - an incredulous look. "What?"

"You thought you'd walk across a floor. So it gave you a floor," Sheik repeated. "And now it's giving you a ceiling in here because you think there should be a ceiling."

Link said, "I think most rooms have ceilings. That's how rooms work."

"No," clarified Sheik, _"this_ room has a ceiling if you want there to be one. And you don't want there to be one."

"I don't?" he asked.

"Not if you ever want to leave it," said Sheik dryly. "This kind of crypt responds to your expectations of what you'll find inside. Makes you see and feel just what you think you would… for the most part. Not everything is a fake. It can only play mind games with you, not un-make the things already in here."

Link stared into nothingness. Despite this new knowledge, he didn't feel as though he could do anything with it. "But it's dark in here. Seriously, it is. Will it just… light up if I think about it really hard?" His careful footsteps bring him closer to something warm and he pauses.

Sheik's chuckle sounded weirdly pained, as though he were hissing to make the sound. "Careful."

Link turned his head and didn't find the motion helpful. "Of what?"

"You're about to walk into a torch."

And suddenly, there _was_ a torch – out of nowhere. Link mumbled a halfhearted curse and shielded his eyes with one hand. "That was _not_ there half a second ago."

He still couldn't see Sheik, but imagined the Sheikah was shrugging as he said, "Or so you thought."

"If I tell it to give us the pentant already will it do that too?" wondered Link. "And anyway, how does it know what I'm expecting? I didn't exactly have a theoretical map of the place when I walked in the door. Oh, yeah, and _where are you_?"

"Well, you probably expected the pentant to be buried at the bottom of the dungeon, and I _know_ it's not simply going to be sitting inside the door. So no, you can't make it give _that_ up. Unfortunately. While you're here however you may as well lend me a hand." Sheik's voice is accompanied by a rattling noise.

Link whips around, coming face to face with a dirty, cracked wall. Then it blinks right out of existence when the rattling happens again, and he looks at the floor where it should have been. The floor's seamless. He doesn't know what to make of it. "Sooo some of this stuff will disappear if I stop thinking it's there… but I don't know what's real and what's the illusion. And the illusion is as good as the real thing until I stop believing in it. Right?"

"Correct." There's the sound of something breaking, followed by a ghostly shriek that isn't Sheik's. "Oh good," the Sheikah remarks laconically, "they're awake now. Should have figured."

Link rounds the corner to find some strange wooden posts set in the floor, crossed at an angle. Sheik was bound to them by his wrists and ankles by ropes – or what look like ropes, sort of, only they look like steel vines. He only had one hand free.

"Damned binds," the Sheikah said, and Link's perception of them flickered from living metal to coarse rope and back again. "Should have known they would trigger the vents." When Link walked up Sheik's eyes lit and he said, "Hand me your sword," stretching his hand out in front of him as best he was able.

Link handed it off and Sheik cut away the rest of the ties, and Link was treated to the surreal sight of actual ropes falling away from steel chains. "That doesn't make any sense." The steel then turned to ropes too and he shook his head. "I don't – how did – "

Three more spiked grates slid open below them and otherworldly sounds crossed… up through the floor? Link half expected to fall again when he thought that, but didn't. He took his sword back and asked, "What, not even a 'thank you'?"

Sheik's eyes were pretty much inscrutable, as always, but it seemed like they could have been amused. Maybe. "When I get the both of us out of here alive I think _you_ will be thanking _me._.. but for now let's take care of the friends we've woken up. Agreed?"

Link saw hideous, shadowy forms begin to come through the floor. "Yeah," he agreed nervously. "First things first. Just… don't do whatever you did to get here again. Please. For… tons of reasons."

"Hm. All practical, I'm sure." Sheik didn't say anything more as he threw himself at the creatures beginning to take shape.


End file.
